Waimea United Church of Christ

Luke 7:18-35“Jesus & John”

This sermon
is somewhat a continuation of last week’s sermon, so I will need to
recapitulate: Jesus was in Capernaum and healed a centurion’s slave. Next he
went to the town of Nain and brought a young man back to life during the
funeral. He did this for the sake of the young man’s mother, who was already a
widow. After this miracle, Luke reports that all the folk who witnessed it were
proclaiming that Jesus was a great prophet sent by God. However, this raises a
whole new issue in Jesus’ ministry. Is Jesus just a prophet?

To be sure,
a prophet is one who speaks for God. The Hebrew term for prophet (Nabi) denotes
the understanding that someone has emptied themselves before God, so he or she
can accept the Word of God and speak it in utterances of needed Truth to
humankind. Examples of prophets are therefore Moses, Jeremiah, Isaiah, Malachi,
and so on. Generally speaking in the lessons learned from the Bible, a prophet
does not finish life well. Trust me, you do not want to be a prophet. It is a
hard, hard life. It is a life of sacrifice for God and for humankind.

Ephesians
4:11-12 speaks about one of the gifts of the Holy Spirit being that of
prophecy. Ephesians 4:12, “to equip the saints for the work of ministry, for
building up the body of Christ.” Being a prophet is all about building up
Christ and others. It is a very selfless thing to be. And, since we call it a
gift of the Holy Spirit, we really have to ask ourselves if we want to be
accepting of that particular gift! Being a true prophet of God will be just the
hardest thing of your life.

That being
said, I appreciate the fact that these people in Nain use the term to describe
Jesus. The problem I see with this is that Jesus simply is not a prophet. Jesus
is God incarnate. Jesus did not empty himself in order to receive the Word of
God. As we read in John 1, Jesus is the VERY Word of God made flesh. To call
Jesus just a prophet is a sincere misnomer—to say the least.

John the
Baptist, on the other hand, is a true picture of who a prophet would be. He was
meant to be the one who announced Jesus’ coming from the very start of his
life. You may recall at Christmas time we heard the story of John’s mother
Elizabeth going to visit Mary, who is pregnant with Jesus at the time, and how
the John jumped in the womb in the presence of His Lord. Later in Luke 3 we
read how it is that John baptized Jesus, at which time the heavens were opened
up and the voice of God was heard saying, “This is my beloved Son.”

In Luke
3:20, we see one line of text which is now critical to our understanding of
what was read today. There it says that John was put into prison by King Herod.
So, when we hear in chapter seven of Luke that John sent two of his disciples
to Jesus, we have to understand that is mainly because John himself is in
prison and therefore cannot go and be with Jesus to help Jesus in this
ministry. I am sure I am not reading too much into the biblical text if I
suppose that John is quite aware that he will either die in prison or be
brought for execution by Herod. He is after all a prophet. And, like so many
prophets before him, he knows his life will not end well.

I also get
the sense that John is sending his disciples to Jesus not really to ask the
question “Are you the Messiah?” for his own understanding and sake. He is doing
this for his disciples. He is giving his disciples over to the Lord because he
knows he has no future anymore. How prophetic is that? John already knows who
Jesus is—and has known even from his time in the womb. He is sending his own
disciples to Jesus because THEY do not understand who Jesus is! Just like the
people at the funeral in Nain did not understand who Jesus is! This is not a
choice of whether to follow John or Jesus. First, John. Then, John gives us all
over to Jesus!

Let us then
take a quick glance at verse 23: “And blessed is anyone who takes no offense at
me.” The Greek word here is “scandalize.” Why does Jesus tell John’s disciple
this blessing? It is a blessing, even though it almost reads like a warning.
However, we need to see that Jesus is blessing these disciples of John.

We have a
huge question that has been dumped in our laps by the garbage truck of history:
Why didn’t Jesus save John from his impending death After all, Jesus is working
all kinds of miracles. He just raised a young man in Nain from death itself. We
can later read in the Bible how prison doors are opened by angels for the
Apostle Paul. Why is John the Baptist left to languish in prison? Is it not
scandalous that Jesus would leave John, his cousin, the one who gave the sacred
right of baptism over him, to leave this greatest of all prophets to face
death?!

Yet, we
realize that John the Baptist himself knew that his job of announcing the
coming of the Lord was now over. He was resigned to this fact and that his
death was at hand. He was simply “resigned.” I think that almost every prophet
must know how it will end for them.

So, Jesus
tells these disciples of John the Baptist not to take offense. John as a true
prophet has equipped these disciples to accept the ministry of Jesus Christ,
and in the end Jesus will save John to the Kingdom of God as he has saved all
of us!

You see,
what matters here is solely Jesus. Right? Doesn’t Jesus matter? He must
matter more. That is why John sends his disciples to Jesus. Jesus must
matter more! John, as the greatest prophet, knows this intrinsically.

In verse 28
we see how Jesus himself says this: “I tell you, among those born of women no
one is greater than John; yet, the least in the Kingdom of God is greater than
he.” As long as John is stuck in prison, he really is not that great. What
matters is who John will be in the Kingdom of God. That is all that really
matters to us.

This is super
important. You see, I have met people in my generation who claim that they are
prophets from God. One is a pastor here on this island who at one point told
his church that he was no longer a pastor but is now to be called a “prophet.”
My first response to this was something along the lines of “Sounds like he
suffers from a Messiah complex.” I wondered silently if the next phase would be
his claiming to be Jesus himself.

I met
another “Prophet” on this island who claimed the title of prophet by virtue of
the fact that he had prayed to come to Kauai.One day it turned out that he was given an air ticket to the island, and
this somehow confirmed that he was sent by God with a message for all of us
here. If everyone who holds an air ticket to Kauai be considered a prophet from
God, well then I really do not know what we should make of that. If everyone
claims to be a prophet, then perhaps nobody is.This is how corrupt our generation has become.

The last
part of our scripture for today addresses this very issue: “We played the flute
for you and you did not dance; we wailed but you did not weep.” (vs. 32) If
everyone is out there beating his or her own drum, thenwe all miss the music of God’s grace that
plays over our lives. If everyone is wailing all at once, then who is left to
sincerely weep?

Luke then
tells of John the Baptist living an ascetic life in the wilderness eating only
locusts and honey. Luke tells his audience how ridiculed John was for this.
People thought that he was demon possessed. Then, Luke tells how Jesus was also
ridiculed by others because he ate and drank with sinners.

In my own
ministry, I have had non-Christians call me a child molester because they had
been told that all Christian pastors are child molesters. Likewise I have had
other Christians tell me that I am not a Christian at all because I am ordained
through the United Church of Christ, a supposedly liberal church. You know,
what Jesus was saying here is still so true today. People hated John the
Baptist because he was an ascetic, and people hated Jesus because he appeared
not to be pious enough.

As
Christians we have to stop listening to all that chatter that is so
distracting. All that matters is Jesus. The chatter no matter! There will
always be people saying unhelpful things.

The Roman
Catholic Pope in Rome on Wednesday defined for all of us that anything that we
hear that causes us to hate, or be disgruntled against our brothers and
sisters, is simply not the “Good News” of Jesus Christ. It is not “good,” and
it reallyis not “news.”

When I go
to teach the bible at the Pua Kea Regency on Tuesdays, always on the tables
that we use I find the daily newspapers. Every time, I take the news and set it
in the recycling bin. I say, “Away with the bad news. Now is the time for the
Good News!” Jesus is all that matters.

I want you
to try something when you go home today. Turn on the news on television or on
your computer device. Listen to the talking heads say this thing and that.
Close your eyes, and while listening to the noise in the background, empty your
mind to God and let His Word come to you. Reflect on the Kingdom of God rather
than on earthly nations.

You see,
John came to tell us and to show his own disciples that it is all about Jesus.
Jesus is all that matters. When we meet after worshiptoday to conduct our annual meeting of the congregation, just
remember that it is all about Jesus. Jesus is all that matters.